Obama Administration Wants to Give Back Hawaii

I consider myself fairly well-versed in current events, but somehow I didn’t hear anything about this move by the Obama Administration which has been under way since at least June.

Obama wants to give away the state of Hawaii.

Not only wants to, but has begun the process to do so.

Back in June, the Department of the Interior announced (to whom exactly I don’t know, but there’s a press release) that it had filed an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the first step in making an executive rules change that would not require the approval of Congress.

The subject of the ANPR is “to consider re-establishing a government-to-government relationship between the United States and the Native Hawaiian community.” The U.S. hasn’t negotiated directly with a Hawaiian government since the monarchy was overthrown in 1893.

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The new rule would recognize the “Native Hawaiian community” as an indigenous nation with a right to self-rule and the legal authority to discriminate against any Hawaii residents who don’t match up to the ethnic standard for being “native.”

In addition to the inevitable racial division this would cause, it would directly counteract the “bargain” that was made when Hawaii became a state in 1959, according to an analysis by Heritage.org.

This bad idea has come up before. There have always been a minority of malcontents who are unhappy with Hawaiian statehood, so several bills on the issue have been submitted to Congress. During one such hearing in 2007, it was noted by attorney Gregory Katsas, representing the Department of Justice, that “native Hawaiians themselves voted for statehood, thus voluntarily and democratically relinquishing any residual sovereignty to the United States.”

In the press release announcing the ANPR filing, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell said, “Through this step, the Department is responding to requests from not only the Native Hawaiian community but also state and local leaders and interested parties who recognize that we need to begin a conversation of diverse voices to help determine the best path forward for honoring the trust relationship that Congress has created specifically to benefit Native Hawaiians.”

The planned move would completely splinter and balkanize one of our states, but hey, it’s all about “diverse voices,” right?

The public meetings that have been held (again, did anyone hear about these?) focused on five questions, according to Interior:

“Should the Secretary propose an administrative rule that would facilitate the reestablishment of a government-to-government relationship with the Native Hawaiian community?

“Should the Secretary assist the Native Hawaiian community in reorganizing its government, with which the United States could reestablish a government-to-government relationship?

“If so, what process should be established for drafting and ratifying a reorganized Native Hawaiian government’s constitution or other governing document?

“Should the Secretary instead rely on the reorganization of a Native Hawaiian government through a process established by the Native Hawaiian community and facilitated by the State of Hawaii, to the extent such a process is consistent with Federal law?

“If so, what conditions should the Secretary establish as prerequisites to Federal acknowledgment of a government-to-government relationship with the reorganized Native Hawaiian government?”

Notice none of the questions is “Should King Putt give away a state to make his radical homies happy?”

The depths of wrong here are almost unfathomable.

Former Hawaii State Attorney General Michael Lilly said, “The current effort to recognize a separate ethnic tribe by the Department of the Interior is unconstitutional because, under the Constitution, it is the Congress that has the plenary power to recognize tribes and ratify treaties. That power does not reside in the executive branch of the federal government or with the various states. So the current effort aimed at creating a tribe of Hawaiians has no legal basis.”

Perhaps I’m just one of those confused conservatives who doesn’t understand the “real” history of the United States, but I don’t recall any president ever giving away a state. In fact, we did a fair bit of fighting to get land for new ones and conducted one huge war to hang on to those we already had.

That particular war was waged by Abraham Lincoln, the president our current Oval Office seat warmer most frequently dares to compare himself with. But irony is the least of the problems here.

Obama’s delusions must be growing. I thought considering himself a king who is above the Constitution was bad enough, but now he apparently aspires to be some sort of Hawaiian reverse Moses, kicking the non-natives out of the Promised Land.

About Author

Tad Cronn is a member of an endangered species, the California conservative. Once abundant, California conservatives have seen their habitat increasingly overrun and heavily regulated by Los Angeles liberals and other non-native rodent species. This makes surviving conservatives such as Tad very grumpy and prone to sarcasm. Feed him at your own risk.

In 2008 my life changed when Barack Obama came into my front yard on a campaign stop. I asked him why he wanted to raise taxes, and he said that he wanted to “spread the wealth.” Since then, I have gained a national following as “Joe the Plumber” and now travel the country speaking and encouraging other everyday folks to get involved in the political process.